A Profle of Sustainable Development Goals in Gikindu Location, Murang’a County, Kenya

Abstract

Between 2000 and 2015, the global development agenda was inspired by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). These were eight international development goals established following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration in 2000. Kenya was committed to the MGD and mainstreamed them in its development processes. The MGD resonated well with the country’s post-independence agenda of eradicating disease, ignorance, and poverty. Kenya’s commitment bore some fruits as evidenced by the progress made in achieving the MDG. In terms of MDG Goal 1, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, Kenya reduced the number of people living below the national poverty line from 43.4% in 1990 to 36.1% in 2015-2016 (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2018b) While these reductions were slower than expected, the county began the Sustainable Development Goals (SGD) journey at an advantage. Even greater achievements were made with regard to Goal 2 (universal primary education), and net attendance ratio rose from 78.7% in 2003 to 85.7% in 2014. Much has also been achieved in terms of gender equality: the primary school gender-parity index rose from 0.94 to 1.02 and the secondary genderparity index rose from 0.89 to 1.08 (Central Bureau of Statistics et al., 2004; Kenya Bureau of Statistics et al., 2015). Good progress has been made in the improvement of maternal and child health, though both still fell far below the target set for 2015, as well as in the fight against HIV/AIDS. With the expiration of the MDG, the United Nations set SDG to guide the post-2015 agenda. The SDG cover a broader range of social and economic development issues compared to the MDG, including poverty, hunger, health, education, climate change, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, urbanization, environment, and social justice. Kenya is committed to the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the SDGS. Since the adoption of the SDGs, Kenya has made great advances in placing the country on a firm implementation path (Repuplic of Kenya, 2017) Inadequate data however continues to be a challenge in assessing progress of SDG implementation. The main objective of this study was to assess progress of SDG indicators in Gikindu Location, Murang’a County, and to show how these indicators vary by households’ socioeconomic status.